About masks

What are masks?

Often Gods and Goddess merge or change over time due to different cultural preferences, while the essence stay the same. Such a thing, we call a mask.

A mask acts like a lens to only refer to a particular aspect of a divinity. Often times masks were created to isolate certain properties. E.g. when you work with Belial you can choose to work only with the lawlessness aspect of his energy or only with the masterless aspect.

A divinity can choose themselves what mask is appropiate to use or a practioner can directly work with a specific mask.

Later epithets were created to do the same, however I view this as specific masks for specific purposes.

A viewpoint

Astarte explained it to me as such. A deity is like a corporation, where a lot of spirits are working together. The CEO is the divinity itself. You seldom need to talk with them.

A corporation can have offices, that are special purpose (these are the masks). They can fuse together with other corporations or even split off to form new companies.

I found this analogy quite clear, but be aware it upg.

The names of Astaroth

Astaroth has a long history and is likely part of humanity and perhaps older than us. She has as much names as the wind and frankly it is unknowable to get them all. However I found a couple, which may help the beginning practioner.

Often a different name refers to a different masks to her, this is only a part of her relative to a culture and a specific period of time.

Bible

Astaroth appeared first as a duke of hell in the renaissance style grimoires. When evoked however she often came as female goddesss. The Astaroth is derived from Astoreth in the bible in the old testament Judges 3:7. Here the people of Israel are said to have forgotten Yahwew and started to serve the Baals and Asteroth. Asteroth refers to multiple goddesses from that time.

This later become Astaroth as we known from the Lemegton and for example the black dragon grimoire.

Astaroth however comes from Astarte, a hellinized form of the middle eastern goddess Attart.

Semitic origin

Attart was equivalent to the goddess Ishtar and hence people often claim that Astaroth is the same as Ishtar. While this is partially true, it is a bit more complicated due to the masks she wears. It is likely that she inherited new aspects during the various merges and that her legions grew considerably during this time.

Astarte was worshipped during the bronze age (at least 1200BC) up to the classical antiquity period (e.g old Greece).

As Astarte she was widely known and worshipped. Not only in ancient Greece but also the Canaanites and by the Phoenicians.

Greece period

Back to a bit later in history. In Greece she became Aphrodite, who suprisingly to many has strong war like epithets. See the battle of Troje for example. But also as Eris the goddess of strife, Artemis under the epithet: Astrateia.

The cult of Aphrodite was strongly influenced by Astarte. Aphrodite even has an epithet called Heavenly (Ourania), which resonates with queen of Heaven. The spartans worshipped her as Enoplios, which means armed and shows one of her more war like aspects and also as Areia, which means warlike.

When invoke her under such epiteths, you can work with different aspects of her.

Egypt

If we move down on the world map, we encounter Egypt. Here we find the goddess Isis. The case of Isis is a bit more interesting. She replaced Hathor and fused with Astarte. Personally I believe both goddess were different, but nowadays they refer to the same being.

Mespotamia

And finally we arive at Mesopotamia. Here the goddess Ishtar was worshipped. We have already seen that the goddess Attart was linked to Ishtar and therefore there is a link between Astarte and Ishtar. These goddesses feel mostly the same when invoked.
And Ishtar came from Inanna.

Inanna is the oldest known name of the goddess. She originally came from the city of Uruk around 4000BC and initially in three forms:

• Morning Inanna (Innana hud)
• Evening Inanna (Innana sig)
• Princely Inanna (Inanna NUN)

Before the conquest of Sargon of Akkad, worship was local to Uruk. After the conquest, she began to spread over whole Mesopotamia.

Afterword

There are many more links and paths in history. I would like to invite the reader to learn the various names and read about the history of the feminine divine during history.

First post

Welcome on my blog about the demoness Astaroth also known as the queen of Heaven aka the goddess Astarte.

I log here my journey with the goddess and collect various useful resources. Besides that I also work with many other deities and demons.

This blog is meant for other demonolaters and is thus written from that point of view.